Abstract
The replacement of capital goods is an event common to all companies. The optimal replacement time of machinery and equipment represents a critical and irreversible event that occurs very frequently in industries. These investment decisions are one of the traditional fields of application of economic engineering. In general, such decisions are made by engineers or other professionals working on the basis of data provided by engineers. This study developed a flexible and comprehensive mathematical model to support this type of decision. At the same time, an analysis and organization of the main concepts and procedures were conducted, considering different techniques proposed for this type of decision by a relevant sample of Brazilian production engineering courses. The developed model was called RVPSE. The tests were performed on real data of the Brazilian automobile market with promising results.
Keywords:
Equipment replacement; Economic engineering; Dynamic programming; Mixed linear programming